Mass. College Football: Catching Up With Endicott QB Drew Frenette

Endicott College junior quarterback Drew Frenette was this week’s recipient of the Division II/III Ray Gallant Insurance Gold Helmet Award for his impressive performance last weekend against Maine Maritime. The New Bedford native tossed five touchdowns to lead the Gulls to their third victory of the season on Homecoming Weekend.

After the weekly luncheon at Harvard University concluded, Noontime Sports caught up with Frenette to talk about the award, as well as the Gulls season thus far.

On learning about the award: “The only time I heard about it this (award) was when Phil Konopka won it when I was a freshmen, so that was the first time I heard of this award.”

On back-to-back weeks of offensive success: “Definitely the first couple of games offensively we were kind of struggling, but I think these last two games we’ve been really clicking. Our chemistry has gotten a lot better, (the) offensive line has started playing very well, giving me enough time to go through my progressions, (our) receivers have been running some great routes and we’ve just been able to execute and hopefully we can keep it moving in the right direction.”

On tossing five touchdowns last weekend: “This year (it is) my season-high, but last year I threw six touchdowns against Western New England, but it is always great – you can always run the ball in, but my coach trusts me with the ball in the red zone, which is good and the receivers have run some great routes. We game plan for certain defenses in the red zone and we just execute, and we’ve come up with some touchdowns. (Earlier this season) we weren’t able to finish in the red zone, which is one of our formulas for success, which is to finish in the red zone and we were able to do that, so I am happy.”

On playing with running back Spencer Walsh: “Spencer does a great job. Whether he’s running the ball or he’s out catching the ball or when he’s in the backfield blocking, he does a great job. He’s a great blocker with picking up blitzes, he runs hard, he’s a strong kid, he’s been seeing the hole great and making some good cutbacks and he’s just been playing great for us. Having a good running game like that really opens up the passing game for us, so it really helps out a lot.”

On this weekend’s game against Nichols College: “We just want to improve on some of our early mistakes. Early in the game last week, we had a couple turnovers, which kind of hurt us early in the game, but we’ll fix that and we definitely want to work on not turning over the ball and giving them good field position and trying to stay out there as long as we can, so we can give our defense a break. We’ve just got to keep executing, we’ve got to run the ball, have the linemen give me enough time to go through my progressions and then my receivers will get open, so I’m looking forward to it.”

On the team’s current two-game winning streak: “(We’re) definitely going in the right direction right now. We’re starting to click and once we get going it’s going to be hard for teams to stop us.”

On keeping tabs on Salve Regina: “I’m always looking at how they’re doing, but we’ve got to take it one game at a time, and if it comes down to the last game of the year against them then that’s going to be a great game, but right now we’re just worried about who we’ve got and how we’re playing and just trying to take it one game at a time and win each week.”